Word origins never black and white

The meaning of the terms Pakeha and Maori has occupied New Zealanders for generations, writes ANGELA GREGORY.

He aha te kupu nei te Pakeha - what is this word Pakeha?

The question sends many New Zealanders scrambling for their dictionaries, igniting an unlikely passion for etymology, but fails to deliver an answer which satisfies everyone.

While the most obvious explanation relates to the Maori word keha, meaning whitish, many prefer to suspect that it really means unflattering things such as stinking pa, flea, sea lice, turnip or long pig.

Controversy over the meaning goes back to early last century.

In 1910 the question "He aha tatou i kiia ai he Maori?" (Why are we called Maori?) posed in a Maori-language newspaper Te Pipiwharauroa similarly unleashed a flood of correspondence.

Maori wrote to the editor espousing their views, which led to an even more vigorous debate on the origins of the word Pakeha.

Anthropology professor Dame Anne Salmond discovered the fascinating correspondence while researching her book Between Worlds.

Dame Anne said there was no hint that "Pakeha," used since the early 1800s, had ever been a derogatory term.

She had read the recent correspondence to the Herald with amusement given the earlier debate among Maori. "It was very controversial back then," Dame Anne said.

"The irony was the debate began among Maori about why they were called Maori."

The theories that emerged in the newspaper columns included suggestions that when Maori first saw European faces they were reminded of their pale woven garments, so they called them Pakeha, after a type of flax.

Another Maori wrote that Pakeha was an ancient term for pale-skinned sea folk.

Ngati Porou leader Mohi Tuurei claimed that Pakeha was derived from the haka (chant) heard coming from a boatload of pale-skinned people said to have arrived at the East Cape long before Captain Cook.

The then 70-year-old relayed his tribal history that when the white people took up their paddles they seemed to chant "Pakepakeha, pakepakeha."

It is not the first theory to propose a phonetic explanation of the word that could well have derived from European language.

Since then some have wondered if Pakeha might be a corruption of the expletive "bugger ya," a common expression of early European sailors and sealers.

After all, the Maori word for the French is Wiwi, likely derived from "oui, oui."

Then again, Pakeha could be an abbreviation of the Maori name for the gods of the ocean, Paakehakeha, which took on the forms of fish and man.

Or it may be an ancient term for the legendary pale-skinned Pakepakeha who possessed canoes of reeds which changed magically into sailing vessels.

A boring explanation is that Pakeha and Maori were originally adjectives, coming after the noun tangata (people).

Maori meant normal or ordinary, while Pakeha meant the opposite.

After tangata was dropped from use the adjectives became used as nouns.

Modern definitions have simply defined Pakeha as New Zealanders of predominantly European ancestry, or even more basically as non-Maori New Zealanders.

However, matters were more complicated in the 19th century.

Native Land Court judge Frederick Maning described a range of Pakeha in his book Old New Zealand.

They included pakeha pakeke (a hard pakeha), pakeha taehae (a miser) and pakeha kino (a hateful pakeha).

A pakeha tutua was a no-good poor creature and a pakeha rangatiria (dependant of a chief) meant the opposite of rangatira pakeha (a superior person.)